Archive for June 27, 2010

Every year Sega Japan holds a “private” summer show where they give select persons a view of some of the new content that they are bringing to arcades later that year. But it’s only private in the sense of it being limited to who gets an invitation as every year sources reveal the content from that event. The most recent show took place on Saturday and we now have a look at a few new arcade products in development although it is likely that they will not get any official support internationally.

First off, Sega introduced the latest title in the Sangokushi Taisen series of games, the card-based Samurai Wars or Warring States. It turned out to be the main attraction of the show and is scheduled for a Japanese release in November. The artwork on the cards themselves is quite detailed and I like the concept behind this game as it’s something different for arcades but these kind of games tend to stick to the Japanese market. Here’s an in-game shot from the official website. You can read about how the game works here at 4Gamer.net.

Next up is Sega Card Gen MLB 2010. I was originally excited about this unique game when it was first shown at AMOA 2009 in the US and it was later seen on location test at a Gameworks in Illinois. Since then we have only seen the game in Japan, so it’s likely that this didn’t test well (or perhaps there is another reason holding it back – it was originally supposed to launch in the Spring). The game was at this show and here is the first nice shot I have seen of the screen up-close. Most of the game is still in English so maybe there is still a glimmer of hope that Sega will still release this in the US (not sure how popular baseball is in Europe for a release there). In case you missed our previous coverage on this game, you can go here, here and here.

Even though the new Virtua Fighter 5 is scheduled to find it’s way to Japanese arcades this summer, they didn’t have a cabinet on display at the show. But they did demonstrate a knockout trial mode in a video.

The cabinet above is the new Vewlix F. Can’t tell the difference between that and the standard Vewlix? That’s because there almost isn’t any. According to the information provided by the manufacturer, Hori, this new Vewlix is “almost identical” to Taito’s Vewlix except that this has some different “maintenance parts”. For 498,000¥ (about $5,500USD) it doesn’t seem like the changes really affect the price, especially for a cabinet without a board but it’s got the Vewlix name so you know you’re getting quality for that much at the very least.

UPDATE: Thanks for Fubarduck int he comments for clearing up a few things about this. It’s actually a more expensive version of the original Taito cabinet, it appears that all they have added is the ability to connect a console to this unit but for an extra, hefty price.